the voms are in town

So. Usually when a child says they have a sore tummy, their mum or dad or granny or uncle will say, hm, when did you last poo? Maybe you should go sit on the loo for a bit? And the child will go and sit on the loo for a bit and the stomach issue is 'resolved' with a little plopperoo.

Last night this trick didn't work so well. Poor Mol. Grey face. She comes downstairs just as Jack is discovered in the boot of Max's car - on his wedding day NO LESS - to say, muuuuuuuuum, my tummy hurts. So, only looking at the TV, I wave her off with the standard, ah, bad luck, go sit on the loo for a while and see how you do. I'll come up in - oh, just after 8pm?

So, just as the titles role and Roxy's anxious face is frozen for the night, I hear this awful clonking and gargling and screamy-choking from upstairs. Hm. That doesn't sound like a successful trip to the loo I think, and for the first time in 30 minutes I look away from the TV and make a move for the door.

Upstairs.
Carnage.
That's the only word to describe it.
Utter Carnage. Well, that's two words now I realise.
Lumpy utter carnage. Yes, OK, maths not a strong point.
Mol had managed to not recognise that the pain in her stomach was actually her feeling dreadfully sick. And because I'd not seen her grey pallor when she came to check out East Enders, I hadn't linked sore stomach with obliterating her room 15minutes later.
Poor wee thing.
There is something desperately sad (I just deleted 'and funny' because I could be hauled in for child-cruelty) about seeing a small person surrounded by a sea of chunks. So helpless and SO covered. It was a minefield. Where to start I just don't know.
I put on my Professional Cleaner Head and assessed the damage.
1.) Get Mol to a sink and get her pj's off.
2.) This is difficult. Do I strip the bed or do I try to scoop the lumps of (what?) stuff off the linen first? In which case do I leave Mol on her own shivering and grey whilst I fetch bucket disinfectant re-inforced rubber gloves gas mask and plastic sacks?
3.) In fact I went for a bit of all of the above at the same time which may explain why it took nearly 35 minutes to clean up.
Mols bear and a seal and oodles of bed-linen all went into the washing machine. Whack up the heat to about 400-degrees. Sorry Bear.
All cosy in bed, 35minutes later, a bin beside her head, a towel on her pillow, a glass of water, all the home comforts - Mol drifted off back to sleep.
2hours later. Choke COUGH gurgle MUUUUUM.
Replay the above scene, but with a tireder greyer child, a mum who's run out of bed linen, and a washing machine who is aching to be left alone.
This time at least Mol got 2/3rds of the vom into the bin beside her bed. Bin now in Bin. (It was made of cardboard... not sure it'd work if I cleaned it... the room would be at risk of being on perma-smell.)
Thankfully the voms ran their course after that. And we all slept happily ever after.

war zone

Harringay is like a war zone on bonfire night. Anarchy.
All night the blasts go off, near and far, and at times uncomfortably sounding like something is about to come popping straight through my bedroom window and join me as I read my unsavoury academic mulch each night.
There is a crescendo at about 9pm - I guess as people have finished their dinners and have drunk their 6-packs of Tescos lager or bottles of acidic Blossom Hill - and they pile in to their gardens, drunkenly waving rockets about and planting them in the turf at dodgy lopsided angles (after a bottle of Blossom Hill the average person is probably feeling pretty lopsided too) and drunkenly trying to attach a match flame to the short fuse... with comedy moments of "oh no, its gone out! oh, no don't go back! no no! leave it! at least 2 hours I read... it could go off any time..! oh god, don't... oh. well done. you re-lit it!") and slightly pathetic oohs and aahs as the fizzings and squeakings don't live up to what the packet tells you they're going to do...
I took Mol and Liz to fireworks last night in a friends garden and it was everything a garden firework party ought to be. BBQ hotdogs, nuts, cupcakes, Shrek, children spreading mud all over the kitchen floor, sparklers, adults trying to have conversations in between scraping ketchup off their kids clothes and cheeks, and the host, hovering outside over a pile of demon-looking rockets and wondering what the safest distance from his house is, but not making it too obvious that he doesn't care an awful lot for his neighbours' windows... OK kids. Its time. A grand statement and a hoop of excitement from 15 over-tired-end-of-week-its-friday-night (do kids have the same sense of Friday-night-itus as adults? Do they get out of school and all they're thinking of is heading straight to the sweet shop for an overload of sugar and then fall into bed having watched some crap CBBC with their eyes half closed, thinking, its ok, I don't have to get up in the morning...) kiddy winks who are so unjudgemental that anything that goes WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and SQQQQQQUUUUUOOOOOOOOOO and FFFFFZZZZZZZZZ with different sparkly colours is, well, pretty awesome. So nice to be the host of a fireworks party for 7 year olds! So rewarding! So powerful!
Now kids! For the grand finale!
And with some quick twizzles to the Catherine Wheel (the one before had managed one full rotation but was kind of a bit on strike generally) the thing went off like a, um, y'know? Well, I was going to say Rocket but that'd be inappropriate. It went off like a dingbat.
Many oohs and ahhhhs, and I was surprised to find that I was in fact making more noise than Mol and Liz, and most of the gang, put together. Quick glances behind them at their weird overly-vocal mum... Oh dear I foresee 'embarrassed child' moments in the playground coming up (no, mum, just GO AWAY and please stop doing that to my friends its NOT COOL...). In fact the other day Mol I think had a bit of a moment as I started singing a little rhyme at her class-mate - who had just told me he was in the choir, so I enthusiastically said, Oh brilliant, sing us a song? To which he said, No! To which I said, OK! I'll sing one instead! and made up a little (and pretty brilliant) ditty - to which Mol started to nudge me and sidle away from the weird-woman with toothpaste all over her mouth.
But that's a bit of an aside.
Anyway. A top night of homegrown organic yumminess.
And some genius woman who had a three week old baby clamped to her breast had somehow managed between sleep deprivation and exhaustion-hallucinations to make the most delicious chocolate cheesecake that had real exploding fairy-dust in the base. Too good. I was probably getting odd looks from my children because I was oohing and ahhing with a brown chocolate smeared mouth and looking a bit like a hangover from Halloween.
The girls were in bed by 8.30pm, with the blasts continuing outside their windows - and by 8.35pm - they were all fast asleep, despite them lying bang in the middle of a war zone.